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Backup 1.

Backup 2.

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Spread Sheet Detailing Actual Costs and Basis for Proper Horry County Impact Fees:

Minimum Average New School Build Cost per Horry County Student, per New Home

and the Average Cost Spread across all Horry County Housing Units

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Current State Law Problems

Be fully aware, that current state law does not allow many of the recommendations for fair impact fees given in the presentation.  Those are many of the reasons that the current law must be changed. Notable examples include:

1. Current state law does not provide for impact fees on new school construction; yet school taxes are double all other county property taxes. A bill to allow impact fees on new school facilities introduced in March 2003 died in the Ways and Means committee.

2. Current state law does not allow impact fees on any new public facilities that cost less than $100,000.  That is, newly required police cars, for instance, are not covered.  Police cars, for one item may not be covered because of another state law definition describing capital improvements on which impact fees may be imposed:: "Capital improvements' means improvements with a useful life of five years or more, by new construction or other action, which increase or increased the service capacity of a public facility."

3. Current state law does not provide for impact fees to be imposed on the basis of a home's assessed value.

4. Current state law provides no exemptions to current Horry County homeowners who buy a new home.

5. Current state law does not allow imposition of impact fees on homes resold to out-of-area buyers.

6. Current state law requires that impact fees be paid back to a developer within three years if not used as projected.*  Then we would be right back to where we started: current residents paying taxes on the costs of public facilities they would not need if it were not for population growth.

*The current statute's words: "within three years of the date they were scheduled to be expended" requires the county council and the school board to have a crystal ball.!

7. The current state law impact fee payback to the developer (who has already included his fees in the price of property he has sold to, say, new homebuyers) means that, if the public facilities are not built within the above time period, the developer gets paid twice.

8. Under current state law, if a service area is not defined as the entire county, then an impact fee may not be chargeable.*  Yet, current taxpayers are taxed for facilities wherever they are built in the county.  Logically, impact fees should be charged in the same way that current taxpayers are charged -- in this regard and all others.

* This may not be a restriction as the statute includes these words in its "service area" definition: "Provided, however, that no provision in this article may be interpreted to . . . reduce the service area or boundaries of a political subdivision which is authorized or set by law."

9.  The list goes on.  Allegedly, according to recognized impact fee experts,  the restrictions on impact fees in South Carolina are some of the most onerous with regard to their stringent requirements for imposing impact fees, if not the most onerous,  in the nation.  The costs required to administer the imposition of impact fees to the degree that current state law requires are also excessive.  At the first Impact Fee Task Force Committee meeting, the Homebuilder's Association representative bragged that that organization had been instrumental in producing a state law purposely designed  to discourage anyone from imposing impact fees.

Comment: The paid impact fee consultant, Tischler and Associates," has not included roads in its impact fee considerations although the South Carolina statute says: " 'Public facilities' means: . . .  (d) roads, streets, and bridges including, but not limited to, rights-of-way and traffic signals."

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Dollars Presented are Minimal and Solid as the Rock of Gibraltar 

The dollars given in the presentation and spread sheet are beyond reasonable question, with the exception of the extrapolation of total new infrastructure cost to half again the new school costs on the basis of that being the relationship of taxation based on ongoing operating expenses.  The per student and per household costs follow directly from figures given by those in Horry County in the best position to know -- the Horry County Assessor as to the present total number of housing units of all types including those vacant and the Horry County Schools Coordinator of Planning as to the estimated cost of new schools and their student capacity as well as the ratio of students to homes which he derives from the 2000 census. 

Note that the average cost per student and thus the average cost per household are minimum in that they are derived assuming the schools are filled to capacity.  If they are not the average costs go up; for example if a new school were at only half capacity, its cost per student would double. 

The average cost of new school construction spread over all the housing units in the county illustrates the dimensions of the problem.  Of course, current exemptions such as the homestead exemption still apply.  The average figure would be higher yet if it did not include, such as vacant units and efficiency apartments.  As education is in everyone's interest, homeowners without children pay the same average amount as those with many.  And businesses pay too and businesses should take note: their taxes will also rise dramatically with the current rate of population growth, without impact fees.

The one-tenth billion dollars committed in the first nine months of 2004 derives from the same figures and Councilman Ryan's count in his councilperson packet of housing units approved in those nine months.  Remember, this is only nine months. If you were to calculate this over years this number would only be a fraction.  Unfortunately, impact fees not imposed in years past to accommodate population growth are gone forever from the county coffers.